Beyond The Farthest Star
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Part I: ADVENTURE ON POLODA
FOREWORD
We had attended a party at Diamond Head ; and after dinner, comfortable on hikiee and easy-chairs on the lanai, we fell to talking about the legends and superstitions of the ancient Hawaiians. There were a number of old-timers there, several with a mixture of Hawaiian and American blood, and we were the only malihinis-happy to be there, and happy to listen.
Most Hawaiian legends are rather childish, though often amusing; but many of their superstitions are grim and sinister-and they are not confined to ancient Hawaiians, either. You couldn't get a modern kane or wahine with a drop of Hawaiian blood in his veins to touch the bones or relics still often found in hidden burial caves in the mountains. They seem to feel the same way about kahunas, and that it is just as easy to be polite to a kahuna as not-and much safer.
I am not superstitious, and I don't believe in ghosts; so what I heard that evening didn't have any other effect on me than to entertain me. It couldn't have been connected in any way with what happened later that night, for I scarcely gave it a thought after we left the home of our friends; and I really don't know why I have mentioned it at all, except that it has to do with strange happenings; and what happened later that night certainly falls into that category.
We had come home quite early; and I was in bed by eleven o'clock; but I couldn't sleep, and so I got up about midnight, thinking I would work a little on the outline of a new story I had in mind.
I sat in front of my typewriter just staring at the keyboard, trying to recall a vagrant idea that I had thought pretty clever at the time, but which now eluded me. I stared so long and so steadily that the keys commenced to blur and run together.
A nice white sheet of paper peeped shyly out from the underneath side of the platen, a virgin sheet of paper as yet undefiled by the hand of man. My hands were clasped over that portion of my anatomy where I once had a waistline; they were several inches from the keyboard when the thing happened-the keys commenced to depress themselves with bewildering rapidity, and one neat line of type after another appeared upon that virgin paper, still undefiled by the hand of man; but who was defiling it? Or what?
I blinked my eyes and shook my head, convinced that I had fallen asleep at the typewriter; but I hadn't-somebody, or something, was typing a message there, and typing it faster than any human hands ever typed. I am passing it on just as I first saw it, but I can't guarantee that it will come to you just as it was typed that night, for it must pass through the hands of editors; and an editor would edit the word of God.
Chapter One
I WAS SHOT DOWN behind the German lines in September, 1989. Three Messerschmitts had attacked me, but I spun two of them to earth, whirling funeral pyres, before I took the last long dive.
My name is-well, never mind; my family still retains many of the Puritanical characteristics of our revered ancestors, and it is so publicity-shy that it would consider a death-notice as verging on the vulgar. My family thinks that I am dead; so let it go at that-perhaps I am. I imagine the Germans buried me, anyway.
The transition, or whatever it was, must have been instantaneous; for my head was still whirling from the spin when I opened my eyes in what appeared to be a garden. There were trees and shrubs and flowers and expanses of well-kept lawn; but what astonished me first was that there didn't seem to be any end to the garden-it just extended indefinitely all the way to the horizon, or at least as far as I could see; and there were no buildings nor any people.
At least, I didn't see any people at first; and I was mighty glad of that, because I didn't have any clothes on. I thought I must be dead-I knew I must, after what I had been through. When a machine-gun bullet lodges in your heart, you remain conscious for about fifteen seconds– long enough to realize that you have already gone into your last spin; but you know you are dead, unless a miracle has happened to save you. I thought possibly such a miracle might have intervened to preserve me for posterity.
I looked around for the Germans and for my plane, but they weren't there; then, for the first time, I noticed the trees and shrubs and flowers in more detail, and I realized that I had never seen anything like them. They were not astoundingly different from those with which I had been familiar, but they were of species I had never seen or noticed. It then occurred to me that I had fallen into a German botanical garden.
It also occurred to me that it might be a good plan to find out if I was badly injured. I tried to stand, and I succeeded; and I was just congratulating myself on having escaped so miraculously, when I heard a feminine scream.
I wheeled about, to face a girl looking at me in open-eyed astonishment, with just a tinge of terror. The moment I turned, she did likewise and fled. So did I; I fled to the concealment of a clump of bushes.
And then I commenced to wonder. I had never seen a girl exactly like her before, nor one garbed as was she. If it hadn't been broad daylight, I would have thought she might be going to a fancy dress ball. Her body had been sheathed in what appeared to be gold sequins; and she looked as though she had either been poured into her costume, or it had been pasted on her bare skin. It was undeniably a good fit. From the yoke to a pair of red boots that flapped about her ankles and halfway to her knees, she had been clothed in sequins.
Her skin was the whitest I had ever seen on any human being, while her hair was an indescribable copper colour. I hadn't had a really good look at her features; and I really couldn't say that she was beautiful; but just the glimpse that I had had assured me that she was no Gorgon.
After I had concealed myself in the shrubbery, I looked to see what had become of the girl; but she was nowhere to be seen. What had become of her? Where had she gone? She had simply disappeared.
All about this vast garden were mounds of earth upon which trees and shrubbery grew. They were not very high, perhaps six feet; and the trees and shrubbery planted around them so blended into the growth upon them that they were scarcely noticeable; but directly in front of me, I noticed an opening in one of them; and as I was looking at it, five men came out of it, like rabbits out of a warren.
They were all dressed alike-in red sequins with black boots; and on their heads were large metal helmets beneath which I could see locks of yellow hair. Their skin was very white, too, like the girl's. They wore swords and were carrying enormous pistols, not quite as large as Tommy guns, but formidable-looking, nonetheless.
They seemed to be looking for someone. I had a vague suspicion that they were looking for me… Well, it wasn't such a vague suspicion after all.
After having seen the beautiful garden and the girl, I might have thought that, having been killed, I was in heaven; but after seeing these men garbed in red, and recalling some of the things I had done in my past life, I decided that I had probably gone to the other place.
I was pretty well concealed; but I could watch everything they did; and when, pistols in hand, they commenced a systematic search of the shrubbery, I knew that they were looking for me, and that they would find me; so I stepped out into the open.
At sight of me, they surrounded me, and one of them commenced to fire words at me in a language that might have been a Japanese broadcast combined with a symphony concert.
"Am I dead?" I asked.
They looked at one another; and then they spoke to me again; but I couldn't understand a syllable, much less a word, of what they said. Finally one of them came up and toold me by the arm; and the others surrounded us, and they started to lead me away. Then it was that I saw the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life: Out of that vast garden rose buildings! They came up swiftly all around us– buildings of all sizes and shapes, but all trim and streamlined, and extremely beautiful in their simplicity; and on top of them they carried the trees and the shrubbery beneath which they had been concealed.